PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – National Geographic Magazine’s cover story in May is about the quest for long life.

No one has ever found a Fountain of Youth, but today’s search focuses, not in Florida, but our genes. Stephen Hall says longevity can be common off the beaten path.

“So, for example, we went to Ecuador because there’s a small genetically-isolated population where the people possess a mutation, and this mutation interrupts the pathway that allows you to grow so, in fact, these people are quite short, but these people seem much less likely to develop cancer and diabetes,” Hall explains.

There’s also a long-lived group of 500 Jewish centenarians in the Bronx, not geographically isolated but with little inter-marriage with outsiders.
Mimicking the effects of the longevity genes is where Hall sees this going although he says the timeline is likely to be longer than people want to hear.

Also you can’t discount the power of luck. For example, to live long, don’t get hit by a car.